Political Quotes

“we have all talked about what the primary goal is right now in the Senate. It is to reopen the Federal Government, but that is not all we need to reopen right now. As we focus on ending this shutdown, I have come to speak in support of a disapproval resolution that is now pending. This is H.J. Res. 106. This is the companion to the resolution that Senator Sullivan and I have introduced to reopen the Central Yukon resource management plan after BLM finalized it over our objection last fall. The formal name of this rule is the Central Yukon Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan. The name is big, and it is a really big area, encompassing nearly 56 million acres, mostly in Northern and Interior Alaska, so the full State of Alaska. But it is this central area here that is really quite substantial. Not all of that is Federal land. You will see the different colors here. In fact, most of it is not. This RMP is only supposed to affect 13.3 million acres managed by BLM. That is still a lot of land. To put it into perspective, it is more than twice the total acreage of Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Vermont. That is what you are looking at here within this region. We do need an RMP, resource management plan, to guide management of the Central Yukon's Federal acres. This plan is meant to replace older regimes that were put in place back in 1981, 1986, and 1991, as well as some lands that are unplanned. This is a big undertaking.”